Storylandia 15 features five tales of dark fantasy and horror by British writer Julie Travis. “From the Bones,” two ancient corpses are discovered on the wild moors of Devon and Cornwall. For one amateur archaeologist they reveal more about the past—and the landscape—than she’d ever imagined. “Grave Goods,” Edward Dobbs’ excuse for drinking and gambling his family’s money away was, to quote an old saying, ‘you can’t take it with you when you go. His son Eddy is offered a diabolical opportunity to disprove the adage. In “Scar Tissue,” everyone’s life leaves marks on them, physically or emotionally, but Marie was different. No scars, just flawless flesh, a life untainted by injury. “Theophany” shows us a hellish underworld that re-emerges to stalk present-day London, aided by a man with his own, deviant agenda. “Widdershins” brings us a girl who defies folklore and walks counter-clockwise around a church, an act that has repercussions for the rest of her life.

Julie Travis has been writing horror and dark fantasy fiction since the early 1990s, after a youth spent watching horror films, writing music fanzines and playing bass guitar in a punk band. Her short stories and novellas, which have been compared to Clive Barker, Thomas Ligotti, Catherynne M. Valente and the Stephen King/Peter Straub collaborations, have been published widely in the British and North American slipstream/horror small press, including REM, Kimota, The Third Alternative (now known as Black Static), Psychotrope, Saccade, Premonitions: Causes For Alarm (which received an Honourable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror 2009), Covers of Darkness, Aphelion, Kzine, Urban Occult and two previous issues of Storylandia. She has also appeared in two queer anthologies: Necrologue – the Diva Book of the Dead and the Undead (nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Literary Award 2004) and Va Va Voom, has written numerous articles for the gay press and co-founded the Queeruption international music and politics festival. Born in London in 1967, she now lives by the sea in West Cornwall and spends much of her time at stone circles and other sacred sites. Find her at www.julietravis.wordpress.com.